The Prince

The Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy. Although it is relatively short, the treatise is the most remembered of Machiavelli's works and the one most responsible for bringing "Machiavellian" into wide usage as a pejorative term. Although philosophers such as Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and contemporary experts think it was a satire, Napoleon and Mussolini were just a couple of examples of others who read the book considering seriously its teachings.